seasonal losses

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It's a raw and rainy day. The two tomato plants in the backyard sprout a summer yield and yet look unequal to the onslaught of autumn. Plump, but not-yet-red, tomatoes will be lost to the coming of grey skies.

Tonight, the president will give a speech that will nibble around the economic malaise of our times. A jobs program, we are promised, is on the president's agenda. With unemployment slightly above 9% and Wall Street drip-drip-dripping downward as the world's woes gain an increasing foothold, those suffering from lack of employment will go largely untouched and those unaware of those without work or hope will hang on in trepidation ... and basically ignore what is not yet their own demise.

In the Middle East, there is turmoil. The U.S. still has its stalwarts who feel that making war and imprinting others with an American view of "freedom" (Afghanistan and Iraq). We are still, in some minds, the good guys and the good guys have an obligation to spread their goodness.

Mostly, there is a loss of hope and trust, two things that politicians and money-makers talk about ad nauseam without creating the actual-factual circumstances that instill trust and hope.

It's a raw and rainy day and it seems to me that the tomatoes will be lost.
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